NEW DELHI: The continued defiance of the BCCI office-bearers and former officials to the Supreme Court orders regarding the implementation the Justice (retd) RM Lodhareforms in the cricket body is no great surprise to Lodha himself. However, he is irked by the sheer audacity of the board officials to openly challenge the Apex order.
Reacting to former BCCI chief N Srinivasan’s group meeting in the Capital on Saturday to express their resentments over the functioning of the Committee of Administrators (CoA), he said: “There is no harm in meeting if a few board officials decide to do so. It’s a fundamental right to meet and no one can take it away from anyone. But a meeting to challenge the Supreme Court order is unheard of. The disqualified officials of BCCI ought not to have met like this. They are not representing their respective association, but they are indirectly doing that. This means that they have no respect for the Supreme Court order.”
Those who attended the meeting said that there were at least 22 state association members were a part of the Srinivasan camp meeting, but the floor of the house threw up a much less number. The old guards also claimed that several other joined the group discussion over the phone to strengthen the solidarity.
The board officials including acting president CK Khanna and acting treasurer Anirudh Chaudhry, who gave an undertaking in the Supreme Court to implement the Lodha reforms, also took part in the meeting and it seems clear that the battle is far from over. Most importantly, losing the powers to wield financial deals and transaction seems to have weaken their eco system. That is why someone with financial might had to foot the hotel bills of the members in absence of CoA’s approval.
With former Karnataka association boss Brijesh Patel projected as the choice of the Srinivasan camp to take over as the president, Lodha also agreed that an election at BCCI is possible before the states would change their constitution. “Ideally, the states should conduct the elections and the elected representatives from the associations should then elect the apex council and the president. But BCCI can also hold its elections before all the states elections are held in accordance to the reforms,” Lodha explained in an exclusive chat on Sunday.
The former Supreme Court Chief Justice then cited the example of the International Cricket Council on how the world governing body changed its constitution without making much fuss. “The ICC’s new constitution is principally quite similar to what BCCI is supposed to implement. Things like women’s representation and directors taking the call on policy decisions while the professionals running the day-to-day working of ICC,” Lodha added.